Image credit: hive.io
Dear reader,
What a messed up year it’s been! We knew that crypto would get messy after Bitcoin reached its all-time high last November but few could have accurately predicted the chaotic shambles we’d find ourselves in now.
First we saw the incredible exposure of Wonderland’s 0xSifu, aka Michal Patryn, aka Omar Dhanani. Fast forward a few weeks and crypto found a new raison d’être as it took centre stage in what looked for a moment to be the beginning of World War 3. Then came the collapse of Do Kwon’s Terra ecosystem. Steady lads! This burst the tyres on Su Zhu’s super cycle and paved the way for a tidal wave of liquidations.
With several of crypto’s main characters either on the run or lunching with regulators, things finally seemed to be getting boring as the market crabbed along sideways. News of multi-million dollar hacks or further crypto adoption barely budged the needle. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, our industry got whiplashed by a couple of amped up Bahama Mamas.
Now, as if all that wasn’t enough, the very existence of our beloved town hall meeting place is under threat. Twitter going down would be the sourest cherry on top of a most inedible cake (barring of course a Tether depeg, Vitalik rage quitting, Binance rugging or Satoshi dumping his coins).
No comment.
But it’s not all that bad. Just as the opaque behaviour of centralized exchanges highlight the need for transparent decentralised finance, so too does the scrutiny surrounding Twitter’s handling show us the need for a truly decentralised platform to speak one’s mind and share some alpha. Lightning fast, censorship-resistant free speech is the perfect complement to blockchain technology.
There are several platforms that offer this to some degree or another; some of them I covered in my previous crypto blogging beginner’s guide. I’m certain that Lens Protocol will play a big role in crypto chit chat moving forward but I’ve yet to dive that rabbit hole. Today I’ll be focusing on one platform in particular, as I believe it’s well suited to accommodate a sudden influx of Twitterless degens. Forget your 2022 woes for the next few minutes and come enter the world of Hive.
It’s a vast project, so I’ll do my best to break this down into a simple overview of the ecosystem, the underlying cryptocurrencies, how to sign up for an account and a few other tips and tricks. As I’m so nice, I’ll even throw in a few extra links for further reading.
Have fun, my fellow web3 wanderer.
Decentralised Content Creation
Hive is a decentralised proof-of-stake ecosystem that caters perfectly for content creators. It’s a popular hangout for all sorts of creatives, whether they be bloggers, storytellers, artists, photographers, musicians, videographers, etc. There are numerous applications living on the Hive blockchain, ranging from social media type platforms, to video hosting, fitness trackers, DeFi protocols and even a handful of games, such as the ever popular card trading game Splinterlands.
Screenshot: hive.io/eco
The project has a colourful history as it was actually forked from a previous blockchain project called Steem shortly after it was taken over by Tron founder Justin Sun in early 2020. A large subset of Steem’s users were not happy with Sun’s takeover of the platform and proceeded to create their own, fully decentralised version of the chain.
Seeing as the content is posted on-chain, your followers and content follow you around wherever you sign in. One account is all you need to get moving on the platform, after that it’s up to you where you’d like to spend your time. Speaking of sign-in, this is an easy-to-remember handle, like @jasedmf.
For example, Peakd and Ecency are two different blogging platforms but you can sign in to either one, and you’ll see the same posts and followers. The websites may have different front-facing user interfaces, but they all source the same material on the backend, which is linked to the account that’s signed in. That’s the magic of Web3.
As far as Twitter goes, DBuzz would be the closest resemblance to microblogging on Hive and offers a very similar look and feel to the blue bird app.
The view from DBuzz.
Why Post On Hive?
With all the creative people actively posting on Hive, numerous dedicated communities have spawned, each one catering to the specific interests of their members. In addition to engaging with likeminded community members, users can also be rewarded for their efforts in the form of curation pay outs. These are supported by the platform’s two native coins: $HIVE and HIVE Backed Dollars ($HBD).
$HIVE actually comes in 2 forms, liquid HIVE that can be bought and sold on numerous exchanges (including Binance) and HIVE Power (HP), the staked version of the coin. Note that unstaking your HP will take 13 weeks, so keep that in mind if you’re trying to time the top. There’s also the possibility to convert $HIVE into SWAP.HIVE tokens and play around on the Hive Engine sidechain.
$HBD on the other hand is meant to serve as a USD pegged stablecoin. Hive offers a 20% savings rate on $HBD (sound familiar?). Whether or not this algorithmic stablecoin can be trusted to keep its peg is beyond the scope of this intro to Hive. I’ll just leave this chart here for you to make your own assumptions:
Image source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hive-dollar/
Fees Be Gone!
As hard as it might be to comprehend for a typical crypto Twitter user, Hive actually operates without gas fees. As a social blockchain, posting content is one of the main functions yet considering the lack of fees, users are required to build up resource credits over time in order to post regular content, thus removing a significant risk of spam.
It’s important to remember that as the content is stored on-chain; it’s there forever. So rule number one on Hive: don’t be a d*ck.
The permanent status of your creative content and crystal clear transparency of your wallet’s contents take a bit of getting used to, but that’s the price to pay for a bit of decentralised social media these days.
Getting Paid On Hive
The thing that makes Hive so strong is its passionate community of creators. Once you get involved in a community, you’ll end up making pals with likeminded people, who may choose to upvote your content if it’s any good. Posts enter 7 day curation windows after they’ve been uploaded and the eventual $HIVE/$HBD rewards are split 50/50 between the author and the upvoters. Every now and then, you might come across a post that’s been upvoted by a curation trail, which is basically a list of accounts that delegate their voting rights to a single voter.
Here is a screenshot of some posts that are trending as I write this:
Screenshot taken from Ecency.
As you can see under the thumbnails, the rewards range from $64 to $105, and all 4 posts still have 6 more days of curation to go. These amounts will be split 50/50 between the author and all the people who upvoted. It’s an interesting system to say the least.
The HIVE Sign Up Process
There are a few signup options available to you, some of which cost a few bucks. My recommendation? Sign up via Ecency, it’s free. If you’re worried about privacy, just use a burner email. The private keys you’ll receive afterwards is what really counts. Also, you might want to switch off your VPN to get past security checks during this one-time signup. You can switch it back on again after.
Screenshot: signup.hive.io
Now comes the tricky part: password management. Pay attention here as this is by far the biggest difference between Hive and any other traditional social media platform.
Once you’re into Ecency, you’ll follow some instructions to receive your master password and a set of private keys. These alphanumeric codes are gigantic and case-sensitive, but I highly recommend writing them down and keeping them safe somewhere. If you lose these codes, it’s game over mate!
There are numerous keys with different access levels, usually the posting key is all you need.
Screenshot: wallet.hive.blog
As for regular interactions, Hive has a few different browser wallets that help you get around the various sites. Hive Keychain is by far the easiest one to use that I’ve come across.
Screenshot: Chrome Web Store
An exciting development for Hive is the recent collaboration with Ledger hardware wallets. My fellow web3 writer and published author Allen Taylor provided the press release for this collaboration. Crypto is a dish best served cold folks!
P.S. Subscribe to Allen’s Cryptocracy newsletter for your daily dose of expertly curated crypto news.
Closing Thoughts…
Well that’s it for today. Hive is a truly interesting, community-driven, Web3 ecosystem that doesn’t get half as much attention as it deserves. It would be a real shame if Twitter went down and that is definitely not something that I’m not rooting for. In either case, I highly recommend taking a look at Hive and trying out a bit of decentralised social media. You’ll find me over there posting both long and short form content under the handle @jasedmf.
Oh yes, I promised you some links. Well done for hanging in there! Here are some additional links and resources to get you even more clued in on Hive:
See you next time,
JaseDMF
Original content, copyright © JaseDMF 2022. First published on Medium.
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I see my Steemit account mirrored on Ecency. How to login to that mirrored account on Ecency?